Having signed up to the Australian Women Writers Challenge last week, it’s past time I committed to at least four books that I’ll read next year to achieve my Franklin Fantastic Dabbler status.

It was kind of exciting and scary to venture beyond my comfortable rut of genres and authors. I’m going to add to this list through 2012 and I’m hoping to review one book a week (or maybe a fortnight). I’m going to be pretty relaxed about it though, so the review might be of a short story or poem or even a newspaper article.

Enough with the rabbiting on, you shout. Who are you reading?

Well, there’ll definitely be some romance and steampunk…but the Challenge was about going beyond familiar genres so I’ll just mention Coleen Kwan’s steampunk book, Asher’s Invention, and Rachael Johns’s, Jilted, in passing (both are out mid year and I really want to read them — and a ton of others).

In picking my starting books I found the AWW Goodreads bookshelf really useful. Please, consider adding any Aussie women writers’ books you know of to this shelf.

Finally…

Savage or Civilised? Manners in Colonial Australia, Penny Russell, History

Love, Honour and O’Brien, Jennifer Rowe, Cosy mystery

A Matter of Perception, Tahlia Newland, Urban fantasy [I know this is kind of cheating since I do read UF, but…whines…I really want to read the antho]

Pictures of Time Beneath, Kirsty Douglas, historical geology [hopefully the library will have it, fingers crossed]

Any other suggestions?